


Literal Curtain Fic

by ermengarde



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 04:14:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21469894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ermengarde/pseuds/ermengarde
Summary: Gerard's place is freezing, Ray wants to fix it. No one has any money.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	Literal Curtain Fic

Gerard's studio is perfect for an artist - the huge windows let in _so much_ light... and so many drafts, and so much cold. Ray is pretty sure that Gee can't afford to heat the place properly, fuck, none of them can afford much, but Gee's place is... well, when Ray visits - at least after he's cooled down from climbing the 9 million stairs - he thinks that it's probably warmer outside. It's lovely in the summer... at least on the days before it's over 100 and the world is like a furnace, but in November? Not so much.

"Gerard, have you ever thought about curtains?" Ray asks, one bitter afternoon.

"Mmh?" Gerard is painting, and distracted, and Ray can see that his fingers are white with cold where they're sticking out of his fingerless gloves.

"Curtains, to block the windows when it gets dark." To be honest, Ray would like to cover the windows 24x7 when it's this cold out, but he knows Gerard well enough to know that won't fly. 

Gerard shrugs and grinds his brush into the dark greeny-gray at the bottom of his canvas. 

Well. That wasn't a no. 

The weather only gets worse, and Ray is getting mighty sick of having to wear all of his clothes all of the time, but it's either that or hypothermia. There had been snow, but that melted to slush, and that's now frozen into a dirty slippery crust over all of the sidewalks. Walking is difficult and dangerous and Ray's pretty sure that he's got chilblains.

He's taken to scouting thrift stores, looking for more layers, maybe a really thick coat, and for thick curtains or blankets that he could _make_ into curtains. He hits the jackpot when he's on his way back from his Aunt Jen's, if it hadn't been worth turning up for family lunch for the food (it was, Aunt Jen is an amazing cook), then it would have been totally worth the bus ride over to visit the thrift store down the block from her apartment. There's a box at the back of the store, un-marked but full of thick velvet fabric in a dusty blue colour... and it's lined, they're fucking huge, thick, lined curtains with the stuff at the top so they can be hung up with hook. 

"How much?" He asks the woman behind the counter.

She looks at them, and him, and makes a face. "They're kinda motheaten and you can see where they've been folded up in that box since they were taken down from... where ever it was they came from." 

"Yeah..." Ray wasn't expecting perfect. They don't need to be perfect and he can patch any holes. They just need to be _warm_

The woman shrugs. "If you really want 'em, take 'em, I was just going to have to pitch them anyway."

Ray is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Thank you!" He grabs the box and books it out of the store.

When Ray gets the curtains home and unfolds them all, they don't look moth eaten... Something has _definitely_ been chewing on a bit near the bottom of one of them, but going by the pinprick holes around the frayed bit, Ray thinks it was more likely kitten than moth. They're fine, they don't need patched he doesn't think, and they're super thick. So fucking what if there's a chewed bit and lines where they've been folded up? This is how he's going to stop Gerard catching pneumonia. 

His dad has a lot of junk in the garage, boxes of old screws with the paint still on them, sorted by size, and every single thing he could salvage from every single house anyone in the family's every lived in. It means there's no space in the garage for any cars, and it almost never comes in useful, but when Ray takes the curtains over when he visits his parents and shows his dad the tape stuff on the top - header tape, his dad calls it - his dad nods and fetches him two slightly used curtain tracks and a box of curtain hooks, a drill and a selection of used screws and a ladder. Ray's dad is pretty cool... Really cool, especially when he offers to give Ray a ride over to Gerard's so he doesn't need to carry the ladder on the bus.

Gerard doesn't even look surprised when Ray and his Dad rock up carrying tools and curtains... People tend to want to look after Gee, and Gee tends to...let them, mostly, at least if they're not getting in his way. It's like he knows what his strengths are and he doesn't have any issues letting other people fill in the gaps between them. It's kinda refreshing, honestly, it's part of what drew him to Gerard in the first place - his quiet assurance in his own talents.

Gerard makes coffee while Ray and his dad put up the tracks and hang the curtains.

"Oh, hey." Gerard reaches out and strokes the fabric where it's been worn in the folds. "That's kind of awesome, the way the history of the curtains is right there in them."

The wear lines are slightly off straight where the curtains have been folded unevenly, forming diamond patterns over the fabric, but the bit where someone's cat got a little over enthusiastic is hidden behind Gee's drafting table when the curtains are shut, so it looks... almost designed, as long as you don't look too closely. Certainly the velvet gives a kind of luxury feel to the place.

It is _amazing_ how much less cold Gee's place is when the wind can't get in through all the gaps in his windows - when Gerard uses the stove to cook dinner it can even get almost warm - Ray's not going to give up wearing all his sweaters at once when he's visiting, but he's not afraid that he's going to come 'round one day and discover Gerard's frozen solid overnight. Gerard's been doing some thrifting of his own, too, and he's started making a patchwork quilt out of scraps of rich warm fabric... Ray's not sure how it's ever going to get all bound off and washed like they're supposed to be (he has grandmothers, he knows quilts) but it's already kind of amazing under his fingers with all the different textures, each one soft or smooth or both.

It's still fucking freezing during the day when Gee opens the curtains to get good light for painting, but on those bleak dull gray days when the sun barely peaks over the horizon and Gerard keeps the curtains closed...well then it can be cosy and homely and Ray snuggles under Gerard's half-finished monster quilt of doom, in his happy place on Gerard's couch.


End file.
